Bad Dog CafeHershey's Bad Dog Cafe is our Off Topic forum -- but NO POLITICS and NO FIGHTING. NOTE: Discussion of guitars other than Tele & Strat belongs in the "Other Guitars" forum and discussion of Music belongs in the "Music to Your Ears" forum.

I'm not sure that Capote made them 'sympathetic'. Perry certainly had a terrible upbringing, but I don't see Capote using this as an excuse for his crimes. I find the book powerful in its contemplation of evil, uncompromising in its depictions of ordinary people doing monstrous deeds.

I read that book in the '60s and still have it. Another crime wouldn't surprise me nor change how I thought Hickock & Smith were portrayed: absolute cold-blooded killer loser low-lives who happened to have human characteristics. That's in part what made the book so interesting, insight into misfits.

The FL case sounds like a tough crime to solve now with evidence at hand, exhumation or not.

I didn't think Capote made them out to be sympathetic characters either. He told the story of their earlier lives to provide a context (i.e. "How on Earth could someone do this?"), and to eviscerate them as much as anything else.

Capote exploited the stories of the killers for his own gain, and did it rather coldly.

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